


Out of Water

by AquaWolfGirl



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cute, F/M, Funny, Happy MerMay!, Humor, I'll add sexual related tags as they come because I'm not sure what I'm doing, Modern AU, Monsterfucking, Nudity, Partial Nudity, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-03-06 04:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18843739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaWolfGirl/pseuds/AquaWolfGirl
Summary: When ex-rocker Kylo Ren buys a lakehouse, he expected to relax near where he spent his summers as Ben Solo. He expected peace and quiet, with fresh fish and lazy days spent enjoying the sun. He most certainly didn't expect for a vicious mermaid to insist this part of the lake is hers, and to get the fuck out.A short-ish story for Mermay, follow the antics (and of course the slow burn) of these two as they settle their differences. Somehow. Maybe. Hopefully. Crossing fingers and fins?





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as a little oneshot a while back on Tumblr, and I desperately wanted to turn it into a full fic. It's a challenge to see if I can finish it before May ends, but with a good portion of it written, I'm hoping I can finish something on time for once! Who wants to bet money on t? (Please don't.)

They didn’t understand. None of them did. 

Not his bandmates, not his manager, not his agent, no one. They all looked at him with shock and disbelief, questioning over and over again if he really, truly wanted to do this. 

Yeah. Yeah, he wants to do this. He’s wanted to do this for a really fucking long time.

There were petitions. There were letters. There were groups on social media, people who sent him both pleas to stay and urging him to go for his own mental health. He was asleep when the announcement was posted to the official site, and so he woke up to emails and texts and mentions aplenty.

That was weeks, though. And if Kylo’s entirely honest, he doesn’t miss it, not one bit. Not the spotlight. Not the screams of the fans. Not the sweat from the harsh lights, not the straining of his throat, not Hux's snores, not the too-small tour bus. He doesn't miss a damn thing.

The bacon sizzles on the stove, the heavy smell of caramelizing fats and the sharper smell of the spring onions he’s cutting permeating the air. He didn’t plan on making a frittata today, but then again, if someone had spoken to him a year ago, he wouldn’t have been planning to move out to a large lake house with a few acres of private property, either. And look how well it turned out.

It’s quiet. It’s secluded. It’s where he used to go with his father when he was a child.

There’s a little town a few miles away, with a few diners and a few doctors and a grocery store and everything a little town needs. There isn’t a big box store for a good 30-45 minutes each way, and while a few people have recognized his face, for the most part he can go into the little grocery store and walk through the aisles without being stopped for selfies constantly. People know him as Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren. And that's not even the best part.

The produce is fresh, the meats are beautiful, and there’s a farmer’s market every Saturday where he can get honey from a local woman named Ellie and jams, jellies, and marmalades from her husband Ethan. Everything is fresh, everything is good, and everything is seasonal. And he loves it, all of it.

It sure as hell beats riding on a tour bus, crammed in with the bandmates he barely tolerates, the entire bus smelling of stale cigarette smoke and post-show sweat.

The bacon starts to pop, and he abandons his spring onions in favor of checking it, before he opens the oven to peek at his buttermilk biscuits. The tops are browning beautifully, almost golden but not quite. A few more minutes, then, and then he’ll put them in the second oven to warm while he makes the frittata.

They didn’t understand.

Fuck them.

-

As he eats his perhaps too-indulgent breakfast, he looks out at the lake, the water sparkling under the bright June sun. It’s a good day to take a dip, the water cool and sweet. It’s a rather large lake, and when he’d been looking at the house, Maz, both an old family friend and his realtor, told him that some of the land surrounding it belongs to a state park. The rest belongs to private owners, like himself, or to summer camps. 

Standing out on his large porch overlooking the lake and the handful of small islands in it, he can see small figures jumping in a little ways off, no doubt one of the summer camps. They’re too far away to make waves though – both physical, and of the sound variety. All he can hear is the wind in the trees surrounding him, the birds who’ve come home after a long winter, and the gentle knocking of the fishing boat he’d bought against the wooden dock. 

It's beautiful. So beautiful, and so private, and so quiet. 

He’s run out of chive butter, Kylo thinks sadly, looking at the little glass jar the butter came in. He’ll have to go into town and get some more later.

-

He’s read things about it being dangerous to swim in lakes and rivers and oceans, because of bacteria and algae and infections and all that, but he doesn’t give a damn. Besides, he thinks, walking down to the small pebbled beach area with a cooler and a towel, there’s no algae on this lake. There’s only clear, blue, sparkling water. A foot dipped into the water proves that it’s not warm, as the articles warned, but perfectly cool.

He’ll take his chances.

After years of tours, of busses, of being shoved into small recording studios, of straining his voice over and over and listening to the screams that damn near drowned out said voice every concert … he’s grateful for the silence, for the calm that surrounds him. He made sure to buy a good bit of land so that no one can bother him, shelling out an extra hundred thousand or so to make absolutely certain that he is completely and utterly alone.

He can’t hear the sounds of screaming children enjoying summer camp. He can’t hear the sounds of screaming children enjoying a weekend at the lakehouse. He can’t hear any screaming at all, and he’s entirely fine with that.

The water is cool, lapping gently at his calves as he wades into the water. The bottom of the lake is slick and muddy, but come on, what did he expect? Kylo kicks off, pushing through the cool water before finding a place deep enough where he can lie back and just enjoy floating.

He doesn’t see the water ripple nearby, hears the gentle splash of something but assumes it’s the waves against the shore and nothing of concern.

Maybe he’ll go fishing. He has no idea what kind of fish are in this lake, but some of them have to be edible. Perhaps not big, but edible. He could make fish and chips, maybe. Or a fish pie. Fish dip. Fish spread. Grilled fish for dinner, with roasted vegetables and some kind of starch – potato au gratin, maybe. He’ll have go to into town, get some more cream and cheese, pick up a few potatoes.

He may not fish today, considering he doesn’t have bait or even a rod, but potatoes au gratin does sound damn good.

The tour bus had a kitchen, sure, but it didn’t have an oven. A microwave, a mini-fridge, and a coffee maker were pretty much the extent of his equipment. And so any passion for cooking had to be put on hold until he got home. And then there were the late nights recording, the dinners Hux and Phasma dragged him to, the meetings with Snoke over black coffee and too-crumbly scones…

He doesn’t have to deal with that ever again. Kylo smirks a little, eyes closed against the sun as he just listens to the lapping of the water against the shore.

It’s just him, his house, his kitchen, and the lake-

Something jabs at his shoulder.

His eyes snap open, and he’s almost immediately blinded by the sun. Sitting up immediately and wading water, looking down into the gentle waves, he sees ….

Nothing. Not even a fish.

He frowns, feeling the soft, muddy sand beneath his toes as he turns, looking for something, anything, that could have interrupted his peace.

“The fuck?” he demands out loud, an annoyed mutter as he stares into the water. It felt like someone had poked him. Not a nibble, not a bite, not just a brush, no, but an actual poke. 

It had to be a phantom feeling. Maybe he’s more stressed than he thought. Maybe he’s thinking too much of Hux, and the harsh jabs the other man would give him between sets, telling him he was too screechy or off key or out of tune when the man damn well knows that it’s impossible for Kylo to perform the song as it sounds on the audio file.

Kylo stares at the water for a moment more, waiting for something, anything, a shimmer of scales or the suggestion of a fish, or maybe even a reed or some kind of aquatic flora, but he sees nothing.

The water welcomes him back into its cool embrace, and he sighs, his arms out by his sides as he leans back again. How long has it been since he’s done this? Not swimming, no, he did that sometimes in the hotels they stayed in as a way to keep himself fit. No, not swimming, but relaxing in the water, feeling the cool waves lap over his legs, the gentle feeling of just floating-

That was definitely a poke.

“Hey!!”

He sits up again, splashing and floundering before he manages to get his bearings again. He spits out lake water, turning and glaring into the water around him before he hears the gentle sound of something popping up from beneath the waves.

“She told me she wouldn’t sell it.”

Kylo turns in the water, as quickly as he can, and finds himself face to face with a girl. A girl who’s glaring at him with all she has, her hair slicked back from her pretty face. He blinks in surprise, treading water.

“Sorry?” Kylo offers, frowning in confusion as the girl’s eyes narrow at him. 

“You’re the one who bought the lakehouse,” she insists. Her shoulders are bare, sweet lake water running in rivulets down her skin. She holds her place much better than he does, seemingly still in the water as he bobs slightly. “She told me she wouldn’t sell it.”

“Who told you she wouldn’t sell it, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Maz.”

His realtor? “You know Maz Takodana?”

“Yes.” The girl's - woman's? How old is she? - voice is cold. “And she told me she wouldn’t sell it.”

What does someone say to that? For a few moments, all he can hear is the lapping of the lake water against the dock, and his own breathing, and the gentle sound of his arms moving through the water as he treads. 

“The contract’s already been signed. I'm sorry?” Because what else does he say? He’s moved in, all of his shit is moved in, he's been moved in for a couple of weeks, now. Maz didn't say anything about some crazy girl wanting the house or the land or whatever she wants.

“You can’t LIVE HERE!” It's damn near a shriek, the girl's voice pitching as high as some of the highest soprano singers who've opened for him, and Kylo winces at the sound.

He thought she was pretty, when she first popped up. Dark hair, freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose. Even though he knows damn well that strapless bathing suits exist, the sight of her bare shoulders led his mind to other places. But that all changes as she bears her teeth at him. Her rows, and rows, of needle-like teeth that he could have sworn were like a human’s before. 

“FUCK!” he yelps.

He’s suddenly stupidly grateful for the amount of times he swam in hotel pools, because it means he can sluice through the water with ease, and away from the … whatever the fuck that thing is. His feet find the pebbled beach, and he damn near collapses on the little rocks, knowing that he’ll be bruised tomorrow but not giving a shit. He turns over, looking back towards the water, and he watches as her head remains above the waves for just a few more heartbeats, before she dips back below the water. And as she does so, he quite clearly sees fins. Or rather one big fin, scales glittering in the sunlight, that flicks water at him before she dives, as though to give one last, “Fuck you,” to him.

He’s seen the tails of mermaid suits. Yeah, okay, this fucking crazy girl could have spent thousands of dollars on a damn good one. But the teeth…

Kylo stares at the water for a good several minutes, willing his legs to work so that he can run towards the house, lock the door, and call Maz. But as he listens to the heavy sound of his nervous heart, he can only stare out towards the waves that looked so calm before.

-

He usually offers Maz tea when she walks in. She likes the jasmine tea he orders. She also likes the clover honey he buys from the farmer’s market. But this time, he doesn’t offer tea, and she doesn’t ask for it as she steps inside the large, modern lakehouse. 

“I take it you met Rey,” Maz says, setting her purse down on the kitchen counter and hoisting her small self up onto one of the barstools at the island. Kylo leans against the opposite side, narrowing his eyes at her. 

“I would think that mentioning a crazy woman who insists I can’t live here and is obsessed with pretending to be a mermaid would’ve been one of the first things you should have done,” he says. He doesn’t mean for his voice to be so cold, but it’s been three days since he encountered the girl, and every morning he’s looked out longingly towards the water. 

“Not obsessed with. Is,” Maz says. 

“Mermaids don’t exist.”

“Nessie doesn’t exist. There’s no scientific evidence to prove that mermaids don’t. We know more about space than we do our own oceans, Ben Solo.”

He’s pretty sure there is scientific evidence. He may not have a degree in marine biology, but he’s seen enough History and Discovery channel to know that there is a very, very hefty chance that the girl he saw three days ago is just fucking crazy and splurged her money on a realistic latex tail.

Maz stands from the barstool, walking across his kitchen. Kylo watches, leaning against the counter as she grabs his electric kettle and starts to fill it with water from the sink. “You think I’m crazy.”

“I think your age is catching up to you.” The woman has looked the same for the past twenty years, with round glasses that have only gotten thicker. Everything else, from her wrinkled hands to her quick wit, has remained entirely the same.

“Watch it, Solo,” Maz scolds as she turns the kettle on. “Her name is Rey. This is her lake.”

“The lake belongs to no one. It’s public water. People own the land around it, but it’s public water,” Kylo explains, keeping his arms crossed over his chest as he watches the woman open drawers for a spoon. She could ask, and he could tell her, but they’re both too stubborn for that, and they both know it. 

“Her kind has been here since before there was such thing as public land. They were here when the lake was surrounded by tribes, and not the kind made up of elementary school students in neon t-shirts. Ah, ha.” Maz emerges with a spoon, and makes a beeline for his pantry. She has to stand on her tip-toes to reach where he keeps the clover honey, but she gets it without any other issue. “She’s one of the last.”

“What happened to the others?” Why he’s asking this, he has no idea.

“Fishing. Pollution. Moving to cleaner, fresher waters.”

The lake doesn’t have any runoffs or outlets. How they could move, he doesn’t know, and he’s not sure he wants to ask. Instead Kylo watches her as she pours her boiling water and dunks a tea bag into the glass mug, watching as the dark tea bleeds and spreads. 

“You promised her you wouldn’t sell the house,” Kylo accuses, watching as Maz unscrews the honey, waiting for the tea to steep. “But you did.”

“Well, when Ben Solo comes home, what other option did I have?” There’s a smile in the old woman’s voice. “Besides, this house has been on the market for years, you know that. People can’t afford it, and those who do become enchanted with the idea of a small town until they spend a week here and then they go back to their palm trees and Prada stores.”

Kylo sighs, watching as the water turns a deep, beautiful caramel color. Maz fishes the bag out, dumping it in the sink before adding a hefty amount of honey into the tea. “Well, then what do you suggest I do?”

“Don’t dump trash into the lake, don’t go fishing, and for fuck’s sake don’t pee in it,” Maz offers, stirring her tea as she turns and look at him, her eyes wide and owlish behind her glasses. “She’ll come around, eventually.”

Eventually. 

He’s not entirely sure he believes her. About any of it. But especially about this … girl … coming around.


	2. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sincerely sorry for anyone who's hungry reading this story. If you've read my other works, you know that I love describing food. This chapter's no exception.  
> If you want the recipe, I'll include it in the end notes :)

His day starts with a leftover biscuit, and orange marmalade, and a perfect view over the lake.

It’s a very large lake. Someone at one of the diners in town spoke about an annual boating race, and show, where the people who come here for the summer show off their shiny speedboats and the retired men show off the canoes and rowboats they’ve been working on in their garages.

As far as the eye can see, though, there are people. There’s a boat several hundred yards away, a large inner tube attached. The only reason that Kylo can see it is because it’s a bright, neon yellow. There are children jumping from one of the nearby docks, a teenaged lifeguard sitting on a plastic lawn chair. There’s life in this lake, and not just the fishes.

Or … mermaids.

She’s waiting for him when he walks out to the dock. The sun is shining brightly overhead, and he’s slathered his arms and neck in sunscreen. The chair he’s pulling makes ka-chunk sounds over and over as he drags it across the wooden boards of the dock. The sound brings her to the surface, where she glares at him as he settles into the chair with a six pack of some craft beer he found at the market, and a book he never got around to reading on the tour bus.

“Sorry,” Kylo offers, as he unfolds the chair. He doesn’t entirely mean it as he settles down into the chair, the canvas creaking with his weight.

“You talked to Maz.”

“I did.”

“And you’re still staying.”

“I am.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“I know.”

She’s still there, glaring at him. Kylo pushes his sunglasses up on to the top of his head, staring at her right back. He can hear the motor of a boat, and the lapping of the water against the pebbled shore. But she says nothing, and he says nothing.

“Look,” he says, after a good few heartbeats of a staring standoff. “I already signed the contract. All of my stuff’s already in the house. I’m not going anywhere. I own a boat, but I don’t have any kids or friends who would throw their beer cans into or piss in your water, okay? It’s just me. And if you really want me to leave, you’re going to need more than a latex tail and Spirit Halloween teeth to make that happen.”

He should have expected to get splashed. Which is why he’s glad he brought a book instead of a tablet or something. It still sucks, though, as he stands at the kitchen counter with a hair dryer, trying to dry off each page.

He was looking forward to finally reading it.

 

-

 

He expected to find peace here. He expected to wake up to blue water in the summer, and white snow in the winter. He expected an easy life, supported by the money he made as their singles climbs to the top of the charts. There’s plenty of it, and there’s more than enough to support his recent obsession with orange blossom honey.

What he didn’t expect was to start a war with a pissy mermaid.

When he makes his way down to the dock after breakfast, he damn near slips. Because instead of the worn wood that he’s going to eventually have to replace for safety reasons, he looks down and sees … something. Seaweed, he would think, but it’s a lake. So ... lakeweed? Something like that. Something green, and slimy, and awful smelling, no doubt from being exposed to the sun for several hours.

Kylo hears her emerge from the water, the gentle sound of her coming to the surface, and when he looks over he sees her absolutely shit-eating grin. This time there are no needle-sharp teeth, but ones that look almost human, if not just slightly more pointed.

“Was this really necessary?” he demands, bending to try and dislodge the weeds from the dock. Each piece was painstakingly wrapped around the board, and he almost groans at the idea of removing all of it.

“Yes,” she says simply, as though telling him the water is cool today. He looks back up at her and finds her closer, her hand resting on one of the poles that goes down beneath the water’s surface. Her fingers aren’t as webbed as he expected, and he stills, watching her as she examines him in return. Though her fingers look relatively normal, her nails are pointed, and he chalks it up to some survival thing. Hunting, probably.

“I’m not leaving.” He sits down on the side of the dock and tries to hide his wince at the squish of the plant life beneath his ass, smelly and damp.

“Neither am I.” She crosses her arms. It’s the first time he’s seen her arms, really, and now he can see the freckles covering her skin.

It takes him the better part of the day to remove all of the plant life from the dock. She remains close even when he goes inside to change into swim trunks, to spread sunscreen across his already pink shoulders and neck, and to get some iced tea. He smells like sweat and rotting something by the end of it, his fingers wrinkled and sore from pulling the strands of dark green kelp from the worn wood.

Even as he stands beneath the dock, getting the last bits underneath, she stays. He can hear the sound of her tail as she moves through the water, can hear the gentle sound of her finding a new place to float. When he comes back up, she’s on her back, her tail shimmering in the sun.

It’s a pretty thing. She must have paid a good amount for it, he thinks, seeing the golds and greens and deep blues in the scales. Variations in colors and shades, all changing with the light like actual fish scales. If he wasn’t so goddamn exhausted, and pissed, he’d ask her where she got it. Hux was looking for a costume designer for their more elaborate music videos.

His gaze moves from her tail upwards. When he first saw her, he thought maybe she was wearing some sort of strapless bikini top, or maybe even shells like that Disney princess, or something like that. But no. He finds himself staring at small, pale peaks, dotted with freckles just like all the rest of her. He’s not entirely sure what he pictured, but they’re a lot more delicate and sweet-looking than he imagined, especially for someone of her temperament.

If she has any issue with him staring at her nipples, and the way they’re peaked in the cool water, she says nothing, instead watching him with just as much interest.

“I-” he starts, unsure whether he should apologize for staring.

“Did you expect shells or starfish?” she asks, remaining on her back, her hands laced beneath her head. “And what exactly did you expect to hold them on?”

“I… I don’t know,” Kylo confesses, because he doesn’t. What holds the shells on Ariel? He doesn’t know. There has to be something, right?

She says nothing more, instead raising her gaze to the skies, and he guesses that’s the end of that conversation. His eyes travel back to a dark mole on the underside of her left breast, though, and the freckles scattered across her ribs, her breasts, her collarbone. They came from lying on her back with her skin towards the sun, like she’s doing now, he guesses.

The dock is slick with slime and lake water when he climbs back up onto it, but it’s a lot better than it was before. It still doesn’t smell great, but he hopes that rain will come and wash away what he can’t. There’s thought of filling a bucket with water, lugging it down the stairs…

That thought is quickly extinguished by the ache in his shoulders as he reaches for his bottle of iced tea.

The water glitters in the sun, and there's a gentle breeze that licks at his heated skin. What a pleasure it would be, to lie back in the lake and let it soothe his shoulders, to feel the cool water lap at his skin and wash away the sweat.

 _Oh wait,_ Kylo things, deadpan even in his mind. 

The girl is still floating there, her face tipped towards the sky and tail moving languidly. “I can’t believe you spent the time to get rid of all of it.” It’s said so casually. So flippantly. Kylo narrows his eyes at her.

“It’s my dock, now,” he grumbles. “And I want to use it.”

“You can try.” It’s accompanied by a smirk. She flicks her tail, as she did before, and he braces himself for the splash of cool water. He’s almost grateful for it, the lake water mixing with the sweat dripping down his face, some trailing down his eyelids. By the time he wipes it away, she’s gone, and he stares out at the lake for a glimpse of a shimmering fin before he stands and makes his way back up to the house.

 

-

 

“Tell me you miss us.”

“No,” Kylo replies, watching as the water boils, the small golden potatoes bobbing with the bubbles. He continues to mix the panko crumbs and herb butter together, ignoring Hux’s glare on the video call. “Because I don’t.”

“Tell Phasma you miss her.”

“I miss you, Phasma.”

“Oh, so it’s just me?”

“Yes.”

“Prick.”

“Tight ass.” Kylo doesn’t look up as he goes to the sink to rinse his fingers of panko and butter. “How is your tight ass, by the way? Getting looser now that you can have guys back on the bus?”

“They were interested in your ass, not mine, and you know that.” Hux’s voice is as sour as the lemon Kylo squeezes into a bowl, before he follows up with a heft squirt of mayonnaise. As disgusting as it sounds, when spread on fish, it adds more flavor than just the butter and panko alone. A trick he learned back in his college days, when he was just starting to explore meals outside of instant noodles.

“How’s the house?”

“Haunted. Don’t come and visit, ever,” Kylo says, serious as can be as he whisks the lemon juice and mayonnaise together.

“You don’t have to lie for me to avoid you and your new log cabin,” Hux sneers. “I can think of a thousand things I’d rather be doing than watching you chop firewood.”

“Like cleaning your anal bead collection?”

Out of frame, he can hear Phasma choke in laughter.

“Thanks, Ren, she just spilled red wine on the hotel sheets, and you’re not here to pay for it.”

“Like you ever cared about destroying a hotel room,” Kylo says, before reaching over to cut the call off. He brushes the mayonnaise and lemon mixture on the salmon before topping it with the butter and panko mixture, pressing it into the fish so that it will develop a nice crust in the oven.

Once the potatoes are boiled, he’ll press them with a spatula, flattening them ever so slightly before popping them in the oven with the fish, and broccoli drizzled in olive oil. It’s a simple dish, yes, but one he made often before they went on the road, before everything changed, arguably, for the worse.

While he waits for the meal to cook, he walks out onto the porch overlooking the lake. That’s part of the reason he bought the house, was for the wall entirely made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, with one glass door that leads out to the porch. He leans on the metal railing, seeing the moon reflected on the lake. As far as the eye can see, there are the shadowy outlines of trees, the small island in the middle of the lake that the summer camp kids use as a challenge to reach, and where families picnic during boating outings. He hasn’t ventured out there yet, for obvious reasons, but one day… one day he will.

As soon as he can row his boat without the oar being grabbed onto by a crazy woman with a fish tail.

The night breeze tickles his cheeks, and he stands there for a few more moments. This… this is the nightlife he likes. Not the thumping base and the shrieks and giggles of drunken girls and the screaming of his friends over the music. He much prefers the owls and the crickets, and the gentle sound of the water against the shore.

A splash, almost silent but not quite, brings his attention back to the lake. If not for the reflection of the moon on the water, he wouldn’t notice the small outline of a head and shoulders. Unsure as to whether she can see him or not, he raises his middle finger anyways.

It’s much, much too far away to splash him as she usually does, but he can see the flick of her tail anyways, and smirks to himself as he hears the oven timer go off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aqua's Salmon Sheet Pan Recipe*
> 
> * This recipe is a slapdash mix of recipes I've collected over the years, and I make it almost every week. I'm not an expert on cooking times or fish done-ness, and so the times I provide may result in a too-dry salmon for your taste, or slightly charred veggies. It depends on your oven and your preference, so if you do end up making it, keep an open mind and go with what you know works for your oven and your fish done-ness preferences. 
> 
> INGREDIENTS (The amounts of these can be changed for taste and serving size)  
> 2 tbsp Mayonnaise  
> Juice of 1 Lemon  
> 1/2 cup Panko Bread Crumbs (I prefer the Sushi Chef brand, the one in the black box, but the normal Panko crumbs can work as well. I just like these because you get a better crunch.)  
> 1/2 stick of Garlic and Herb Butter (I use the Kerrygold brand because that's what I can usually find, but any brand that you prefer works)  
> 1/4 cup Crushed walnuts  
> Salmon Fillet(s)  
> Baby Golden Potatoes  
> Broccoli, green beans, or other vegetable of your choice
> 
> Step 1: Boil the golden potatoes for 20 minutes, or until tender and you can poke them with a fork. Take them out and set them aside to cool. 
> 
> Step 2: While the potatoes are boiling, prepare your salmon topping. Mix mayonnaise and lemon juice together. Yes, it sounds gross, but it keeps the fish flaky and not too dry. The amount of this doesn't really matter, just until you have a nice-looking sauce. Taste if you want to see if it needs more or less of mayo or lemon juice.  
> Pour some of the panko into a bowl and add some of the garlic and herb butter, about 2 tbsp, and a handful of small walnut pieces. If you don't have walnuts or are allergic to nuts, it tastes just as good without them. You should have a nice, cohesive topping that isn't too dry, but isn't too oily from the butter. You can always add more of each. Make enough to cover the salmon filets you have.  
> *If you make extra, you can put it in the fridge and eat it with a cracker and a slice of white cheddar as a snack. Very yummy.
> 
> Step 3: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil for easy clean up. Add the salmon. Brush or spoon on some BUT NOT ALL of the mayo and lemon mixture, then add the topping. Press the breading topping down to help it stick to the fish. 
> 
> Step 4: Take your cooled potatoes and gently squish them with a flat, solid spatula, the flippy kind. Make sure it doesn't have holes in it. Press down just lightly enough that they burst, but don't make them too flat. Brush them with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, or whatever herbs you like. Add them to the sheet pan.
> 
> Step 5: Put whatever veggie you want on the sheet pan (I like broccoli) and drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper. Add some grated parmesan if you're feeling fancy.
> 
> Step 6: Cook in a 375F degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until veggies are cooked and salmon is 145F degrees. Drizzle everything with remaining lemon and mayo sauce (trust me, it's so good and I still don't know why)
> 
> If you do decide to make this, let me know! Sorry it's so vague on amounts; I've been making it for the past year or so and just eyeball everything now. Whoops?


	3. 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It makes me ridiculously happy to see that some of you tried the recipe I gave! It was just a goofy little thing, I really can't cook all that much, but to see what you did with it and that you gave me suggestions back (I need to try it with pecans!) made me cry actual tears of happiness. Thank you for indulging one of my other beloved hobbies <3

She loosens some of the planks on the dock, resulting in him falling through and ruining a good pair of leather sandals. She covers the dock in little pebbles from the beach, which isn’t so much of a big deal but it’s a pain in the ass to sweep them all off. She jabs a hole into the boat he bought, forcing him to bring it into town and inquire as to who could fix it. The older man is kind-looking, with smile lines and pictures of his kids and grandkids all over his workshop. Kylo makes another connection, so he has her to thank for that. But it means he can’t go out in his boat for at least another three weeks while Mr. Johnson repairs it. He’s not the only one with broken boats in town, it seems.

Within a week, he’s tired of her shit.

And so, even though he can see her latest annoyance, the slippery weeds covering the dock yet again, he doesn’t go down. He cradles his cup of tea in his hands and watches her, seeing her head bob in the water for a few moments. Is it truly possible to have a staring match several hundred feet away? He knows she’s looking at him, and he’s certainly looking at her, but he can’t see her eyes. He can only see the way she moves, can see the way she dives before coming back up, her hair dark and slicked back once more.

To retaliate would be dickish. Besides, what would he do that isn’t harmful to her waters, or to her? Her pranks have been annoying, yes, but relatively harmless. There’s the option of buying a bunch of tacky floating things and tying them to the dock so they don’t float away, but he has the feeling he’d come down in the morning and find her quite content, lying on a raft painted like a pizza.

He continues watching her. Eventually, she becomes bored, and dives, her scales gleaming and sparkling in the sun. He catches just a glimpse of her below the water before she speeds off.

The sound of a speedboat startles him, disrupting the otherwise quiet morning. There’s the whoop of someone younger and more reckless than he is, and Kylo watches as the boat gets scarily close to his dock. The captain is young, and so are his passengers. Young and stupid, it seems, as they grab an empty can and toss it over the side.

“Hey!” Kylo shouts, but the combination of him being so far away, and the roar of the engine, means they don’t hear him as they speed away.

The sun is warm on his shoulders, the stairs cool beneath his bare feet as he approaches the beach. She’s already there, bobbing in the water and holding the empty can. Some energy drink. Kylo recognizes the label even from the bottom of the steps. The weed squelches beneath his shoes, and he walks carefully, not wanting to slip thanks to her prank. She’s done the kindness of removing some of it on the end of the dock, though, so he can sit.

“It didn’t used to happen,” Rey explains as he takes the can, setting it beside him to take up later.

“It’s happening all over,” Kylo mutters. “Not just in water.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it. She turns and looks towards one of the other beaches. One of the camps is having a cookout, it seems, because counselors are guiding plastic folding tables down to the pebbled beach, and there’s a large grill for later. It’s too early for it to be breakfast, but maybe it will be for lunch, or dinner. Kylo watches them as well, their neon yellow counselor shirts unmistakeable even from where they are on the lake.

“The kids are okay,” Rey explains. Kylo looks down at her, seeing the flash of her tail just below the water. “It’s when they grow up that they forget.”

“You’ve been here long enough to see them grow up,” Kylo deduces. She looks nineteen, maybe early twenties at the absolute most. Maybe it’s something in the water.

“We age more slowly. The sun doesn’t reach us as strongly as it reaches you, which makes the skin age faster.” It makes sense. He wonders if Maz knew this.

It’s a moment of quiet, a moment of peace between them as they continue to watch the counselors set up, folding chairs now being unfolded and added along the tables.

Eventually, she swims away without so much as a goodbye. Or a thank you.

He didn’t expect either.

 

-

 

She fills his newly filled boat with pebbles. Which, if he’s entirely honest, is much cheaper than sinking it or stabbing a hole in it. Still, he grumbles as he makes his way down the stairs. She’s floating on her back in the water, breasts to the sun. He notices a few more freckles than before, but says nothing.

Well, no, he does say something. But not about the freckles.

“What do I need to do to get you to stop?” he snarls, unbuttoning his shirt, because he was stupid enough to think that maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t pranked him this time. He can see the dock from his porch, but not where he’d tied the boat. Not wanting to ruin the shirt, he hangs it on one of the posts, stomping down to the beach and dragging the boat further up onto the shore.

“Leave,” Rey says simply, her tail flicking water towards him. The droplets splash his bare shoulder as he bends over to give the boat another tug, and he glares up at her. Fuck, this is going to take forever…

He digs his hand in, grabbing a handful of pebbles and tossing them back at her. She yelps, diving under the water. The handful of pebbles creates several dozen splashes, ripples disrupting the water. She pops back up not a heartbeat later, baring her sharp teeth at him. _“Hey!!!”_

“Don’t ‘hey’ me!”

“What was that for?!?!”

“For filling my boat with rocks!” Kylo hisses, grabbing another few pebbles and launching them at her. He knows damn well she’ll swim away, it’s more that he’s angry than desiring to hurt her. True to his thinking, she swims backwards, watching as each of the pebbles hits the lake with a harmless splash. “I’ve done nothing to you, you know that? I recycled that damn can, I haven’t retaliated in anyway, and you continue on making every _single_ one of my mornings hell.”

“Humans have been making my life hell for ** _decades!”_**

The last word is practically a shriek, her teeth bared entirely, and for the first time, he notices the darkness of her eyes, how they go almost entirely black, the pupil large and overwhelming the white. Still, he stands his ground, leaving the boat to step into the water. He’s wearing sandals and jeans but fuck it.

“And so you decided that I would be one of them,” Kylo says. She swims back ever so slightly, not too much, but enough that he takes another step forward into the water, his calves wet, now. “I told you I wouldn’t piss in your water, and I wouldn’t throw trash in it. And have I?”

She’s quiet, staring at him, her lips closed around her teeth. That doesn’t soften her glare, though.

“No, I haven’t,” Kylo continues. “So find out who those assholes were and fill their speedboat with pebbles, not mine. Because I’m not leaving, but neither are they. Fuck it, I’ll help you, but leave me the fuck alone, all right?!”

He throws pebbles into the water in anger once more, but not in her direction. He can feel her eyes on her as he scoops them out. The sun is hot on his shoulders, but he’s too deep into it, now. How weak would that be, to go all the way back up to get sunscreen? So he decides a little pinked skin is worth making his point, and digs out all of the pebbles. By the time his skin starts to prickle and his back and hips ache from bending over, he’s gotten most of the pebbles out. A few remain, but he’ll deal with those later.

When he stands, she’s still there. Watching him. Her eyes aren’t as dark as they were, her pupils a normal size. She says nothing as he grabs his shirt and pulls it on, his shoulders red and entire torso slicked with sweat. His pants cling to his calves, and his sandals squelch as he goes back up the steps. He turns around at the top, and just barely sees the edge of her tail as she dives.

He’ll go down later, after slathering aloe on his shoulders, to finish the job. But when he peers into the boat, there are no pebbles. Not a single one.

 

-

 

There’s nothing for three days. No seaweed (or lakeweed, he still has no idea). No pebbles. No damage to his boat. Nothing. Just peace and quiet.

Apparently, peace and quiet means no shimmer of shining, creamy scales, either, because he brings his lunch down to the dock the second day and manages to eat an entire sandwich, a bowl of soup, chips, and an iced tea without so much as a glimpse of her. He’s almost tempted to leave a few chips on the dock, to see if she’ll take his peace offering. Which then prompts an internet search of whether fish can eat salt, or oil, or potatoes, and gets him nowhere considering she’s not entirely fish.

He’s not entirely sure if she would be offended if he made her sushi, but with the sudden calm, he’s not intent on finding out.

He goes into town on Saturday, browsing the farmer’s market and returning home with new jams, jellies, honeys, and produce. Dinner is a calm affair, eaten out on the porch overlooking the lake. He’s familiar with the sight of smoke coming from some of the beaches, barbeques and grills fired up and ready to be used for the whole summer, but as he looks across the water, he doesn’t see any shimmer.

When he steps back out with a cup of tea, feeling the cool night breeze against his skin, he only sees the light of the moon on the lake. No scales. No splashes.

Nothing.

He guesses he should be grateful.

 

-

 

When he steps outside in the morning with coffee and his breakfast, he almost steps on it. He’s glad he doesn’t, because he’s barefoot and that would hurt like a son of a bitch. But he nearly steps on it, stepping right in the middle of the ‘O’ by sheer dumb luck before he realizes something’s amiss.

Kylo looks down, seeing grey pebbles scattered across the dark porch deck. Frowning, he sets his plate on the railing before he walks around to get a better look.

 **IM SORRY** has been painstakingly spelled out with small, pinky-nail sized pebbles. Not that he’s had much time to examine them while he was brushing them off of his dock or shoveling them out of his boat, but these are the prettiest he’s seen. They gleam in the early morning sunlight, like they’ve been polished, and he stares down at them in complete and utter confusion, not quite awake yet.

It takes him a good few minutes, and several more sips of coffee, before reality hits him and he almost chokes on the scalding liquid. Staring down at the letters, he realizes two things.

The first is that she can read. How, he doesn’t know. That’s a question for later pondering, and potentially asking.

The second, more damning realization is that in order to get up to the porch, she had to drag herself up to the dock, pull herself across it, hoist herself up the stairs, and flop all the way up the second set of stairs leading to up to the porch that juts from the second level of the house. All while carrying the pebbles.

Either that, or--

“Ben Solo, do you know what time it is?” Despite her tone, she sounds wide awake.

“Maz," Kylo says firmly, staring down at the pebbles. He went down to the dock, went down the stairs, looking for any sign of scales, of water, of a trail, _anything._  

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

"Maz," he asks, a bit breathless as he touches one of the pebbles of the "I" with his foot. "Can Rey walk?”


	4. 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I finish this before May ended? No. But I don't care because this ship has already left port and I'm having fun writing this story. So there.

The town is small and quaint. There are few hip restaurants for the tourists, ones with stained wood and metal and leather and bartenders wearing suspenders. But there are also plenty of little places, breakfast nooks with mismatched mugs and sweet waitresses, classic diners with jukeboxes that are a little squeaky but still sort of work. 

Kylo steps into one of these diners, a cacophony of laughter and chatter and silverware clinking together hurting his head. He's smacked in the face with nostalgia, memories of Han bringing him her hitting him like a thunderbolt. This diner's one of the oldest and busiest in town. He can hear kids as they shriek in laughter, can hear the high school students chatting, can hear housewives gossiping over Diet Cokes and salads. Looking around, there's nobody he recognizes, but every type he remembers. 

He guesses that’s one of the reasons why Maz picked it. It’s loud. It's busy. Everyone's occupied with their own business.   


And because she's Maz, and she wants to remind him of the childhood he had here. Again.

She’s already sitting down with two milkshakes, a menu in her hands and her big, round glasses perched on her nose. Kylo slides into the squeaky cherry-red booth, watching her as she pushes the chocolate milkshake towards him. 

“I guessed,” she says simply. “You used to love them as a kid.”

“I haven’t had one in at least 20 years,” Kylo mutters, but he takes the milkshake anyways, trying not to be ill as he takes a sip. “Maz, I need to know, can Rey-”

“Later, Solo. Order first, then talk,” the old woman insists from behind the giant menu. He can’t even see the top of her head. 

The waiter’s a young man, no doubt still in school, all nervous smiles and sandy hair and blue eyes. Maz knows him, though, and Kylo watches as she grills him on his school projects and how his mother is. By the time they’ve finished ordering, Kylo’s leg is bouncing under the table. He’s not sure whether it’s nerves or fear or just plain eagerness, because this could change everything, couldn’t it?

“Maz-” Kylo starts.

“I told you her kind left the lake, moving to cleaner and less populated waters. How do you think they did that when there are no runoffs, no creeks, no rivers?"  Maz raises one eyebrow at him, reaching up to sip her milkshake as she watches him for his reaction. 

If she was looking for some dramatic gasp or wide-eyes or something, she doesn’t get it. He stares right back at her, his head starting to ache from both the chill of the milkshake and the idea that  _ Rey can fucking walk.  _ “How is that possible?"

“Beats me. Beats her, too. There’s magic in this world, Ben Solo, and the sooner you accept that, the better off you’ll be. Those who deny it tend to end up on the wrong side of it.”

“Magic,” Kylo repeats.

“I said what I said, and you know that I said it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense though. She just… comes out of the water and what, there’s a flash or sparkles or fucking rose petals or something? Like some Disney movie?” Kylo demands, brow furrowing as he observes the old lady across the table. 

Maz shrugs, lifting her straw and stirring her milkshake a bit. She grabs the cherry off of the top, popping it between her thin lips. “I don’t know," she mutters around the sugar-soaked fruit. "I’ve never seen it happen. Thank you, Cameron,” she says as the waiter brings her soup and sandwich. Kylo mumbles a ‘thanks’ under his breath as the boy puts his burger and fries down. Maz reaches across the table and steals a fry. Kylo lets her. 

“Then how do you know it happens?” he demands.

“Because she trusts me enough to tell me,” Maz insists, stirring her soup. “Because I've known her for years and respected her waters unlike others. Be grateful she came up on land for you, Ben Solo. There aren’t many people she would use her legs for.”

“Why? Because they’re covered in scales or something?” He grabs the ketchup, shaking it vigorously as Maz watches him with narrowed eyes.

Within seconds, there’s a hand holding his on the ketchup bottle, halting his shaking. Kylo looks up to find Maz practically glaring at him. 

“Because when she has legs, every single step she takes is agony. Imagine a Charley horse, or the worst cramp you’ve ever had. Now imagine the last time you were stung by a bee. Now imagine the last time you stubbed your toe or skinned your knee or sliced your finger on a piece of paper. All of that combined is how it feels for her to take a single step. And so she pulled herself out of the water, walked up those two flights of stairs to your porch, and endured that pain for as long as it took for her to arrange those rocks. Scoff at the idea of magic all you want, but that doesn’t negate the fact that she endured more pain than you could ever imagine  to apologize to you.”

She lets go of his hand, continuing to give him a look before she’s taking a sip of her soup, letting him consider her words. 

The thing is, though, he’s not sure what to make of them. Because it all just seems too … unreal.

“There has to be some evolutionary-” Kylo tries, putting the ketchup down. 

Maz shrugs. “If there is, I don’t know it and she didn’t explain it if she knows it. I’ve told you all I know.”

He knows she’s lying through her teeth. He knows that she hasn’t told him the entire truth, because it’s Maz. There’s always something else, some snippet of information, some secret that she reveals just at the right time. But he lets it go for now, taking a fry and dipping it into his milkshake.

He asks her more questions. The teeth? That was evolution, to help them blend in with human kind, Maz explains. The aging thing? Rey was right, it is about the sun, but Maz is pretty certain there's a species aspect to it, too. Some fish have longer lifespans than even humans. Combination of DNA, Maz says with a shrug, taking a bite of her club sandwich. 

He has other questions, too, but ones probably not appropriate to ask his realtor, and his oldest family friend. And ones he doesn't want to ask the girl who only just extended the olive branch. And so he keeps them to himself, enjoying the greasy, juicy burger and the fries that are somehow better than they were all those years ago. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe they just got a better cook.

The rain starts as he leaves the diner, bidding farewell to Maz and seeking sanctuary in his car. He’s not sure how long he sits there, staring at the steering wheel, before he pulls out of the parking lot and heads home. 

When he gets home, it’s turned into a downpour. The porch has an overhang over it, and so he steps out onto it, watching as damn near sheets of water come pouring down onto the lake. 

The IM SORRY hasn’t been disturbed since he left, and he leaves it just where it is for the moment. 

 

-

 

He’s not sure what to offer her as a peace offering, and he doesn’t ask Maz. He’s already picked her brain enough about the girl in the lake. And so he takes his lunch down to the dock, noticing no pebbles in his boat, or lakeweed on the wood, or anything else of that sort. 

The boat wobbles a little as he gets in, but it holds steady otherwise. Mr. Johnson did a wonderful job repairing it. He’ll have to thank the man somehow, come with more business or just an extra bit of cash to spend on his grandkids. 

Kylo doesn’t even get ten feet from the shore when she pops up beside him. Well, ‘popping’ may not be the right word. He sees the shimmer in the water, looks down to see the freckled, pale skin of her bare back and the gleam of her scales. And then she’s poking her head up, dark hair slicked back from her face. 

“So,” Kylo says, meeting her amber eyes. “You can walk.”

“Yes,” Rey replies simply. “Maz told me you two had talked.”

“Maz talked to you?”

“She said you had lots of questions.”

“I do.” How could anyone not? But he stays quiet after that, because for some reason he gets the feeling that it may be rude to ask. 

She turns on her back, floating with her face towards the sun. Her eyes close, and he has to wonder if she’s ignoring him until she opens one eye and asks, “Well? You can ask. If you want." She moves to cradle her head in her hands, fingers laced behind her neck. 

“Ah, right,” he tries, awkward as all hell because of the new freckles sprinkled across her breasts, and the way she’s looking at him expectantly. “Maz said to walk was constant agony.”

“Yes,” Rey says simply. “Putting pressure on my feet or legs is excruciating. Which is why she keeps a wheelchair for me when I visit. Walking is where the pain comes in. If I sit, then it isn't so bad. The longer I'm out of the water, the worse I feel, but the actual pain doesn't come until I stand.”

When she visits. So that means she visits Maz. It makes sense. Kylo hasn’t been to the woman’s house since he was a kid, but he knows it’s on this side of the lake, in between two other, larger houses. It's a small house, a cottage at most, filled with the most random and fascinating items. Just exploring the place kept him entertained for hours while his father talked with the older woman. He can only imagine what that house is like for someone who doesn't know the human world as well as, well, a human does.

“Then why go out at all?” Kylo asks, frowning. “If it hurts that much?”

She’s quiet for a moment. He watches as he turns her gaze to the sky. “... cookies,” she says finally. 

Cookies. “Cookies are worth excruciating pain for,” Kylo repeats flatly.

“Maz’s are,” Rey replies matter-of-factly, turning to look at him and raising one brow. “Have you had them?”

“Yes.” He remembers having them as a child, remembers sitting with a plate of them and a glass of milk, remembers watching his father talk to the older woman in the living room. He couldn’t hear what they said, ever, but he remembers Maz’s hand on his father’s knee, the low voices, Han’s smile that wasn’t quite as bright or cocky as it normally was. 

He doesn’t know exactly what they were talking about, now, but he can guess. 

“So you know that they’re worth it,” Rey insists. 

“I don’t know, I haven’t had them in about twenty years,” Kylo explains, reaching up to push some of his hair away from his face. Fuck, it’s hot today. Are they at a better place now? Does this mean he can go swimming without her trying to drown him, or something? He’s not sure, and he doesn’t really want to ask, and so he just stays in his boat. He can hear the water lapping against the side, can hear the gentle swishing of her tail as he reaches for his sandwich, unwrapping it from the brown wax paper.

There’s a splash, and Kylo startles, looking down at Rey’s hands on the side of the boat. She peeks up over the side, just a little, and eyes his sandwich. “... is that bacon?”

Kylo looks down at his sandwich, a BLT. Well, to be honest, it’s a panini with arugula, sundried tomato paste, sharp cheddar cheese, and extra bacon from his breakfast. About an inch of bacon is peeking out from the crispy side, and he looks back to Rey. “You … like bacon?”

“It’s not bad,” she says in a way that makes him think that’s it’s almost up there with cookies in the ‘worth excruciating pain’ category.

Though he loathes to lose half of his sandwich, there’s also the idea that in order to get bacon, she has to walk, which means agony. All he has to do is go to the butcher and risk a few grease splatters. And so he takes one half of the sandwich and offers it to her, seeing her eyes widen as she leans up and takes it. He notices she takes great care not to get the sandwich wet, using her tail as a propeller to keep her as high above water as she can go. He would offer her a seat on the boat, but would that mean her getting legs? Would her weight sink the little rowboat? How would he even pull her up?

For what it’s worth, she manages fine on her own. He watches as she takes little mouse-like nibbles of the sandwich, savoring every bite of her treat. He eats his own, observing her as, every time a bit of mayonnaise drips onto her fingers, she holds the sandwich with one hand and licks the others. She’s so damn careful with it, making sure no bread encounters the water. He has the feeling she’s had a similar experience, maybe with cookies, and knows the danger. 

She finishes licking the last few crumbs off of her fingers, the nails just as pointed as ever but her eyes wide and almost innocent. Happy. 

“What else do you like to eat?” Kylo finds himself asking, catching her mid-last-lick.

Rey stops, her tongue still on her thumb before she pulls her hand back and dips it below the water again. “I don’t know. I’ve only had cookies, orange juice, and bacon.”

“Ever had a potato chip?” he asks, bringing up the small, slightly grease-stained paper bag of homemade chips. 

“No?” Rey asks, immediately popping up from the water with a 'splash' and moving towards the edge of the boat, her eyes wide and hands eager as they grasp the side of it.

Kylo grins for the first time in a while, unrolling the bag and pulling out a perfect, browned, crispy one for her, covered in sea salt. 

Oh, he has so much to show her. 


	5. 5

A summer storm rolls in, and so he can’t go down to the lake for a few days. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes, and by the time he decides that yes, he well and truly needs to go to the grocery store because he’s completely out of food, there are tree boughs all over the road. It isn’t storming now, but the entire world seems damp and quiet as he walks into the grocery. 

“Did you hear about Evan’s car? Terrible, just terrible,” the clerk is telling a customer. “Entire tree just fell right on it.”

“That thing’s been edging towards the junk pile for years, I wouldn’t call it terrible,” the customer says as she pulls out her wallet. 

Kylo fights a small smile as he makes his way down the aisles. The market was canceled thanks to the weather, but a lot of the produce went here so as not to go to waste. He picks up a few things, not too much, but a few. There’s a local couple that produces gourmet chocolates, and though the truffles he has to buy in their store down the way, they do sell chocolate bars through the grocery store. And so he picks up one that claims to have bits of bacon in it, tucking it between multicolored carrots and some ricotta. 

 

-

 

It takes three more days for the wind to calm down enough that he can go down to the dock. When he gets there, he sees the true carnage. The dock and steps are fine, but pieces of trees litter the beach. A large branch the circumference of his forearm has crashed down onto the pebbles, no doubt from one of the pine trees above. He’s not sure what to do with it, and so he just leaves it as he walks out onto the dock where Rey is waiting. 

“What do you do when there’s a storm?” Kylo asks, settling down on the edge of the dock with his paper bag of goodies, and a cheap dollar store boogie board under his arm.

“The little island,” Rey explains, pointing to the small island in the middle of the lake. It’s too tiny to put a proper house on or anything like that, but it’s a fun activity for the camps to row out there and explore the little cabin that’s been abandoned for years, its roof gone but stone walls remaining.

“You don’t stay underwater?” Kylo asks as he pulls his sandwich out of the bag, setting it on the dock. He can see her eyeing it, and smirks as he pulls out another one. “Calm down, you get your own.”

For someone of the sea (well, lake,) her smile is like sunshine. She leans up to reach for the sandwich, but Kylo bonks her gently on the head with the flower-patterned boogie board. The look she gives him is totally worth the three bucks he paid for the piece of foam and spandex, and he has to resist the urge to laugh as she stares at him.

“Wait,” he scolds, getting a flash of the sharpened teeth in return. “Just wait, all right? Here.”

He lets the foam board go with a ‘plop’, watching as it floats on the water. Rey looks confused, until he takes the wax-paper wrapped sandwich and sets it on top. It stays. 

“There. Table,” Kylo explains, fishing his own sandwich out of the bag, and two small bags of homemade chips. He puts the other on her ‘table’. It probably won’t hold a drink, the water making it bob too much, but the sandwich and the chips are relatively safe, and he watches as Rey eagerly unwraps the sandwich. It’s a BLT again, the exact same he made before. She nibbles it the same way, licking bacon grease and cheese off of her fingers as she goes. 

The skies are still grey, and the air still cool thanks to the storm. Unlike the days before, he can’t hear much from the camps. Everyone’s either inside, or keeping it safe with the threat of another storm on the horizon. This one is supposed to be smaller, less rain and less wind, but the chances aren’t worth taking. 

Kylo stares out at the small island, just barely seeing the peek of grey stone through the trees. 

He watches the lake lap at the distant shore, just enjoying the sandwich and the sounds of the world around him before--

“Are you a chef?” 

Looking down and to his left at Rey, he sees she’s finished one half of the sandwich and is reaching for the other, amber eyes earnest and eager as she slips the end of the panini between her pink lips. “Ah, not professionally,” Kylo explains, taking another bite of his own. 

“You should be. I’d walk to the restaurant.”

“Wouldn’t get much business,” Kylo mutters. “At least not without the constant stream of tourists.”

“You’re Ben Solo. People would come in. They missed you.”

To hear his given name from Maz is one thing. To hear it from this mermaid is another. He looks down at her, continuing to watch her eat until she realizes he’s staring at her, and stops. “What?” she asks. 

“Don’t call me that.” It comes out more growling than he expected it. He looks back towards the island. “I don’t go by that anymore.”

“Maz calls you Ben.”

“Maz is old and set in the past. I don’t use that name, and she needs to realize that.”

She’s smart. He knew that, of course, but she’s smarter than he gave her credit for because she’s quiet. He’s not sure whether it’s the tone of his voice or the harshness of his words, but she looks down at her sandwich instead, and takes another bite. 

He takes another bite of his as well, but it doesn’t taste the same. There’s something bitter in the back of his throat, like bile or ash. He struggles to get the bite down. 

“They did miss you, though.”

All right, so maybe she’s not as smart as he thought. “What makes you say that?”

“I heard them talking about when your father sold the house.”

It’s been torn down, he knows. He went to look at it on Google Maps a few years ago, found the most recent picture of it. By then it was rubble and the pictures showed a construction site. He drove by it the other day. He has to admit, they fixed up the place. Took down a few trees, letting the land breathe and allowing for a bigger home with a two car garage and large, towering windows. 

“Who's 'them'?” Kylo asks.

Rey shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know their names. People talk when they go fishing to pass the time. Your name was on the lips of a lot of people that summer. Han’s, too.”

“Yeah, well,” Kylo mutters, looking down at his sandwich before offering it to her. “You want the rest of this?”

The potato chips don’t even taste good, which is sad, because they’re homemade and were time consuming to make. He gives those to her as well so they don't go to waste, staring out at the lake. He examines the shore for where he thinks Han’s old cabin used to be, but everything’s changed. Trees have fallen, houses have been torn down and rebuilt, and there were no summer camps when he was younger. It was all cabins made of wood with ceilings that rumbled when it rained and gravel driveways that crunched under the tires of Han’s old sports car, the Falcon. 

Everything’s changed.

“Here.” Kylo reaches into the bag, bringing out the chocolate bar wrapped in wax paper. He’d taken it out of the packaging, and now he wonders if the wax paper was a bad idea. He probably should have given her… what, a Tupperware or something? Something water tight yet reusable? He stares at the bar in his hand before offering it to her, feeling his cheeks flush and the tips of his ears heat up because oh, shit, what the hell should have wrapped it in?!

“What is it?” Rey asks, reaching up to take the slim brown rectangle from him. She slices through the paper with her sharp, pointed nail, peeling it apart to reveal the smooth milk chocolate. 

“It’s a chocolate bar. You know, chocolate, like in Maz’s cookies. But this has bacon bits in it.”

Her eyes grow wide like dinner plates, and he wonders if this is what everyone means when they say ‘like a kid at Christmas’. Some combination of unbridled joy, pure shock, and beautiful innocence. The mermaid cradles the bar of chocolate, holding it like some precious and valuable thing. But she doesn’t eat it.

“If you like it, I can get you more,” Kylo assures her as she strokes a finger down the smooth back of the bar. Thanks to the heat, her skin comes away streaked with melted chocolate, and he watches as she immediately slips her finger into her mouth. Her eyes are still wide as she snaps a square off, and pops it between her lips. And then he watches as they get even wider, which he didn’t even consider as a possibility. 

And then the chocolate bar is shoved back at him.

Kylo blinks in surprise, taking it from her. “What, you don’t like it?”

“No.” It’s muttered around chocolate, her lips streaked with it. “I mean yes! I like it, I love it.” Rey chews, and he can tell when she gets to the crunch of the bacon bits because there’s this sort of strong ripple in the water around her and he guesses it’s some sort of happy, surprised tail flick or something like that. “It’s… it’s amazing…”

“Are you… are you crying?” Kylo asks, staring because yes, that’s exactly what it looks like, her amber eyes are shining and then she’s reaching up to rub her finger under her eye. 

“No,” Rey snaps. “It’s just… it’s just good, okay?”

“Then why did you hand it back to me?”

“Come back with it,” Rey insists, swimming closer to him, so close that she’s practically between his legs. “I can’t keep it with me, so you keep it.”

“I could get you something waterproof for it?”

“I can’t carry it,” Rey explains. “And it would float, anyway. Maz tried it with the cookies.”

Oh. He didn’t think of that.

“Just bring it back, please?” Rey asks, reaching up to touch his hands around the chocolate. Her skin is cool, and smooth, and he finds himself looking down at where her fingers are brushing his. “Bring it back, a piece every day.”

“Not if it’s shitstorming like it was yesterday,” Kylo protests because while this truce is turning into something a bit more meaningful, sure, there’s no way in hell that he’s going to risk those stairs when the rain is coming down like it did.

“You know what I mean,” Rey snaps, her brows furrowing as she lets go of his hands and the chocolate. “I’ll be here.”

He took it as a promise, just like he took her ‘IM SORRY’ as a promise not to mess with his shit any more. And he counted on it, on her being there the next day during lunch. He came with two sandwiches and two servings of chips and the chocolate bar and everything, even a bottle of cola for her to try.

She snorts at the bubbles, and he laughs. So she doesn't like cola. But she does like the chocolate, he knows, making a note to buy a few more bars the next time he goes into town. It's sweet, the way she nibbles on the square. The way the sun reflects off the water droplets on her skin. The way, if she stays above water for long enough, her hair begins to dry just a little and curl around her ears and temples and jaw. He didn't notice it was slightly wavy before. He didn't notice the caramel-colored highlights, either, that match her eyes. 

Her laughter ripples in his head like a pebble hitting water. Reverberating. Echoing, even when he's away from the waves and in the sea of his sheets instead. Her smile pops into his head as he's leaning against the counter watching his biscuits through the oven window, and the memory of it warms his chest better than a freshly baked buttermilk biscuit ever will. He's a sap, sure, and he knows it, but there's no harm in admiring her, right? It can't go anywhere, sure, but there's a reason for all the stories, he guesses. Men surrendering themselves to the seduction of sirens. He gets it. He well and truly does. 

He tries a different kind of sandwich after a few days. A club sandwich, bread toasted but not pressed like a panini. Stacked high with all of the good stuff (and extra bacon). He wraps it carefully, trying to imagine just how Rey's going to attack this one, given that it's a good few inches higher than the panini that she's used to. With the same eagerness and vigor that she's attacked every sandwich with is his guess. 

He brings a thermos full of iced tea, two cups, and a bag of fries for them to share. It's a grey day, but there's no threat of rain, which is why he starts to wonder where she is after about ten minutes of waiting with his feet in the water. He can hear the motors of some nearby boats, the lapping of the waves against the shore and the knocking of his boat against the dock, but no splashing. Bracing his hand against his brow, he looks out to the lake, trying to see any kind of shimmer of scales. 

Nothing. 

He waits. He eats his sandwich when the hunger pains get to be too much, and some of the fries. He leaves half for her, looking out over the water and trying not to feel like he's about to be sick with worry. Because it's fine, it's not like he needs to have lunch with her every day or anything. She just... she said she would be there. For the chocolate. And there are a few squares left. 

She never breaks the surface.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you grab the pitchforks, Rey is fine! This story isn't going to be that dark, I promise!


	6. 6.

“I’m so sorry!”

It’s the first thing Rey says when she comes up the next day. He’s sitting on the edge of the dock, his feet in the water, when he sees the flash of her scales beneath the surface. And he can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when he sees her dark hair, her sheepish eyes as she emerges from the water. 

“It’s fine,” Kylo insists, because it truly is. She doesn’t have to eat lunch with him every day. 

“I got too close to a boat motor,” she explains, the words pouring out of her so quickly he has to take a second and think about what she just said.

“... what?”

She shifts, moving in the water and twisting her body sideways a little. As she turns, he can see just the edge of some sort of weed, wrapped around her arm like a bandage. A decent amount of skin is covered by the greenery, and Kylo frowns, leaning forward to get a better look. “How?”

“I ....” she starts, and he watches as her cheeks flush a little pink. “I was trying to wrap the rudder so that it would go the opposite direction, but then they got in and started the boat. It’s not bad, really.”

But it was bad enough that she missed lunch.

“Can I see?” he asks, and Rey nods, reaching to unwrap the green. Almost immediately, he can see reddened skin, and he inhales sharply when he sees the entire wound. 

It’s a nasty gash, something that he would have gone into at least an urgent care place for. It doesn’t need stitches, he doesn’t think, but it’s not exactly pretty. He leans in closer, frowning and lifting his gaze to hers. “That came from a motor boat?”

“I’ve had worse from them,” Rey says simply, moving to wrap the green back around her skin. “I didn’t have to go to Maz for this one, at least.”

He waits until she’s finished rewrapping the cut before he’s offering her the boogie board, and the chicken, pesto, and ricotta panini. Her eyes shine like her scales, her smile as bright as the sun on the water around them, and he can’t help but smile a little as well as she immediately tears the parchment paper open. 

They don’t speak as they eat, and that’s part of the reason he enjoys her company so much. There’s a comfortable silence with her. After years of screaming, of talk shows, of podcasts, of interviews and of _singing_ , he’s grateful for the silence that comes with the mermaid. Content, peaceful, perfect silence. 

It’s exactly what he was looking for here. 

It took a while to get it, sure, but now that he has it… 

He doesn’t want it to change.

She takes two squares of the chocolate bar, this time. “Making up for yesterday,” she calls it, her smile bright as she nibbles. Kylo offers her a smile back, and then watches as she disappears beneath the shimmering lake. Her tail flicks as she goes, sprinkling his calves with droplets of cool water, and then she’s off with the promise that she’ll be back tomorrow. 

He waves her off, even though he knows she can’t see it, and then stays at the dock, feeling the sun warm his shoulders as he looks out towards the little island. 

 

-

 

Maz’s house is exactly as he remembers it. 

The gravel crunches beneath the tires of his Audi as Kylo pulls into the driveway. The little cabin is flanked by two modern houses, no doubt built during his time away from the lake. Despite the amount of concrete and dark-chocolate-colored wood next to it, Maz’s little lakehouse looks as perfect and as welcoming as he remembers. He can just see the sparkling water through the trees behind it, and as he closes his car door, the old woman herself comes out on the small porch to greet him. 

“I was wondering when you were going to stop by,” she says, wiping her hands on the bottom of her teal t-shirt, worn and stained after years of wear.

“You’re always invading my kingdom, I figured it was time I invaded yours,” Kylo teases, approaching her and dropping a friendly kiss on her cheek. She smells of chocolate, of butter and sugar, and his mouth waters the same way it did when he was little. “Cookies?”

“In the oven, still. Patience is a virtue, Solo,” Maz insists, guiding him into the house. 

He remembers being entertained for hours by everything at Maz's. There was always some new gadget, something from years past that seemed so new to him. Lemon wedge squeezers and potato peelers and apple corers and everything in between shoved onto shelves and displayed like the treasures they are. He’s not sure how it’s possible, but as he ducks his head to step into the house, there’s even more to the hoard than there was when he was younger. 

There’s a new bookshelf, he notices, filled up with recipe books and old romance novels and everything in between. He gravitates towards it as Maz goes into the kitchen, picking up a recipe book and turning it to see sticky notes poking out of the pages. He can’t help but crack a smile, remembering pulling ten books down from the shelves at a time and seeing which one had the most notes while his father and Maz spoke in the kitchen. 

“Tea? Coffee?” 

“What do you think?” Kylo calls back as he puts the book back on the shelf, looking to the side and seeing the ladder that allows her to reach the top ones. “How many of these recipes have you actually made since I left?” 

“A few,” Maz yells. Kylo can hear the whistle of the kettle, and walks into the small kitchen. 

The place hasn’t been touched probably since the 60s, maybe even the 70s. The cabinets are the same caramel-colored wood, and the counters are still the same linoleum he remembers as a kid. There are a few more chips, a few more chunks missing out of the emerald green material, but it’s held up reasonably well through the years. The fridge is different, though, and the table his father and Maz so often sat at has been replaced with a large, long slab of wood. Kylo runs his fingers across the smooth surface, looking at the marbling. 

“The old one was getting on my nerves. Too much wobbling,” Maz explains, pouring hot water into two mugs that no doubt came from some thrift store years ago. “Bud Johnson made that for me after it fell down in a storm a few years ago.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kylo mutters. “I’ll have to ask him if he can make me one.”

“I’m not sure what it will cost you,” Maz says as she brings the tea over, the smell of jasmine wafting from the mugs. “I traded him in herbs for his wife.”

“Cost doesn’t matter.” Even though the table has changed, the chairs haven’t, and he hears the squeak and creak of the wood in his memory before it even reaches his ears. He settles in, taking the mug of tea and muttering his thanks under his breath as the old woman goes to open the oven. The kitchen is blasted with the smell of sugar and butter, and Kylo takes a deep breath just before Maz closes the oven door. 

“Almost. Not quite,” she says, setting her little red timer for another two minutes before she walks over and joins him at the table. “So. Rey.”

“What about her?” 

“You’ve been feeding her.”

“Yes?”

“That’s my job, not yours.”

It’s said so seriously that Kylo feels his heart plummet, because if there’s one thing he’s learned in his lifetime, it’s not to piss off Maz. He cradles his tea mug, staring at her with wide eyes before she’s smirking and leaning forward. “Unless you want to apply for the position instead?”

“She can’t live off of your cookies,” Kylo insists, danger averted and his heartbeat starting to return to normal, if ever so slightly. “She needs real food.”

“Oh, if your younger self could hear you now,” Maz says with a cackle. She stands, walking across the kitchen and returning with a little beehive-shaped jar. “I do give her real food.”

“You gave her bacon.”

“And you gave her panini BLTs and chocolate with bacon bits in it. I see what you’re doing, Solo.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Kylo protests, frowning as Maz lifts the lid of the jar, revealing golden honey. He watches as she drizzles a hefty amount into her tea. “I’m staying on her good side so that she doesn’t break my dock or my boat again.”

“Mhm,” Maz hums. “And just how far on her good side do you want to get?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean, Ben Solo. The woman doesn’t wear a shirt,” Maz replies matter-of-factly. “Or a bra, for that matter.”

“Maz.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Solo. You’re flirting with food. Just remember she has fins.”

“I’m not flirting,” Kylo insists right as the timer goes off, beeping over his weak protest. Maz ignores him in favor of the cookies, pulling them out of the oven and setting them on the stove to cool. Kylo’s mouth waters when he sees the shining, melted chocolate, the perfectly soft middles and the crispy edges. “I want the recipe to those.”

“Over my dead body, Ben Solo,” Maz teases, settling into her chair and stirring her tea before pointing at him with her spoon. “It’s in my will. Use it wisely.”

“I’m not flirting with Rey. I’m feeding her proper food.”

“Homemade potato chips sounds like flirting to me. All that effort to impress a girl?”

“Maz.”

“There’s a reason there are legends of men drowning themselves for these creatures.” Maz stirs her tea again, sliding the honey jar across the table to him. “For her sake, and for yours, be careful. She’s been through more than you can imagine. She’s not just pretty, Ben Solo. If her smile and her bare chest is all you like, then give her the rest of the damn chocolate bar and walk away.”

Her words linger as he drives home, a container of chocolate chip cookies buckled into the passenger seat. 

 

-

 

“My money’s on Glenn.”

The two women have been gossiping at one of the checkout counters for the past fifteen minutes. Kylo knows this because the candy section is right by the checkout counters. He lingers, examining the gourmet ones. He has several of the bacon ones already in his basket, but what else would she like? Toffee? Raspberry? Mint? Hazelnut?

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, hear his motor’s been acting up lately.”

“Who’d you hear that from?”

“Frank.”

“Frank doesn’t even have a motor, what’s he know about motors acting up?”

When he was on tour, he heard all about who was sleeping with whom and who was feuding against whom and who was doing what drugs. He much prefers this small town gossip, smiling to himself as he grabs a dark chocolate and a white chocolate bar, just for her to try. Has she ever had either?

“And what about the canoes?”

“Joe’s got a beauty in his garage, been working on it since last July. I hear his carvings are gorgeous.”

“Won’t win him in the speed test, though.”

“There’s a speed test for canoes this year?”

“Mhm, just ask Bonnie. Ryan’s judging this year.”

Not wanting to interrupt the very important conversation, Kylo waits, since the redhead behind the counter is the only one working. He wants to say he remembers her, though he can’t recall her name. He recalls her smile, though, a little crooked but warm as she’d looked down on him as a child. 

It takes a moment, but eventually she notices him holding his basket.

“Oh, come over here, honey, we’re just chatting,” she says, waving him over. He catches a glimpse of her name tag and yes, Brit, that’s it. Brit from Georgia. He remembers his father talking with her, bonding over the Falcon. 

“Only a few more days until the big boat show.” Her smile is just as warm as he remembers as she starts to scan his few groceries, and many chocolate bars. “You showing anything, Ben?”

Kylo bites his tongue, resisting the urge to correct her as he shakes his head. “Don’t have anything.”

“Maybe next year, then.”

“It’s earlier this year,” Kylo observes. 

“Something about July bringing storms,” the woman Brit was talking to offers. “And school’s starting earlier, so camps are ending earlier. They want to make sure the kids get to watch.”

“Ah,” Kylo says. It makes sense. 

“You doing that fondue or something?” Brit asks, grinning at him as she holds up one of the chocolate bars. 

“Oh, uh, no. Just trying them.” Great, that’s just great, not awkward at all. 

“The honey one’s my favorite,” the other woman says before she waves. “I’ve got to get home, Brit, Ed’ll be back soon.”

“See you, Cheryl!” 

He’s not sure whether it’s the small town sort of mindset, or whether it’s that they're used to being nice to tourists, or whether they all just know him as Ben Solo, Han Solo’s son, but he missed the warmth that came from this place. The reason of exactly why his father came here clouded that kindness for a few years, but now the sky is clear as he walks out to his car and loads the few bags of groceries into the back. 

 

-

 

Rey doesn’t like caramel, but she does like the raspberry dark chocolate one. The caramel is too drippy in the summer heat, too sticky, clinging to her chin and to her fingers as she laughs and tries to lick it off of her skin. 

He wonders if she knows what she’s doing with her tongue and her happy little ‘I like chocolate’ sounds, her honey-brown eyes looking up at him from beneath her lashes. 

He wonders if she has to try, or if she’s just that seductive naturally, given the legends. 

He wonders if would make a difference if he knew.


	7. 7.

“What’s that?”

All right, he’ll admit it. He’d been lazy and besides, he wanted to go into town to the grocery store before all the tourists came in. Stock up on everything he could possibly need so he can avoid humanity for a few days. He came back with several brown paper bags worth of ingredients, and one large, grease-stained cardboard box.

“It’s a pizza,” Kylo explains, settling down with the box on the dock. Rey looks completely and utterly confused, grabbing the edge of the dock and pulling herself up a bit so that she can look more closely at the drawing of a mustached man holding a pizza printed on the cardboard.

“What’s a pizza?”

He’s going to have to do this with a lot of things, isn’t he?

“It’s a base of dough, and then it’s covered in tomato sauce, and then covered in cheese. And then people put toppings on it,” Kylo explains. “And then they put it in an oven until the cheese melts and the dough firms up.”

“Uh huh,” she says, in such a way that makes him think she still has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. So instead he opens the box, looking inside it to see if the pizza survived the ride and the trip down the stairs. Though some of the cheese has slid a little, it still looks pretty damn good. Orange grease dots the melted cheese, looking exactly like he remembers, having had several slices in his youth when Han was too lazy to make dinner.

Han was too lazy to make dinner a lot.

“Here,” Kylo mutters, grabbing one of the plates he snagged from his house and lifting a slice of pizza onto it. It’s still hot, he’d made sure of that with the seat warmer in his car, and he watches as the cheese pulls itself into delicious, thin strings.

“What is that?!”

Rey’s eyes are as wide as the plates he brought, and he stares down at her, confused.

“Cheese, you’ve had it before. It was in the sandwiches I gave you,” he explains as he reaches to hand her the piece, the cheese still attached and pulling further as she takes it down to her little boogie board. He watches as it finally snaps, and her hand shoots out of the water to catch the end of it, before she puts it in her mouth.

It shouldn’t be this cute to watch someone discover cheese, but Kylo grins as Rey nibbles down the string until she reaches the tip of the pizza slice. Her fingers are already orange from grease, her lips shining from it as she takes a tentative bite.

He’ll have to speak to Maz as to why she didn’t introduce Rey to Joe’s famous pizza.

She takes miniscule bites, savoring her human-world treat. For a sandwich, it makes sense, he guesses. But for a pizza?

“There are plenty more slices, more than I can eat. Go ahead, just bite it,” Kylo explains as he takes his own slice.

He probably shouldn’t have said ‘bite’.

He can see the slightest flash of razor-sharp teeth, sees the way Rey’s eyes narrow, the eyes of a predator, before-

Chomp.

Somehow she gets more than half of the slice of pizza in her mouth, cheese stringing from where she bit it. She pulls it back, and her eyes widen as she makes a squeak of distress when it doesn’t break.

“Here, you can just-” Kylo explains, leaning forward and grabbing one strand with two fingers, breaking it and then doing it for the other few strands. “It’s what happens when cheese is hot.”

He watches her as she licks the cheese into her mouth, nibbling little by little until the string has disappeared between her lips. There’s orange grease on her chin, and though he shouldn’t--

He reaches forward, rubbing the grease away with his thumb. “You’re too good at making messes,” he mutters, recalling the stones, the weeds, the … well, everything about her.

“I’m good at making messes?” Rey demands, her brows raised. “Tell that to the summer camp kids when they have s’mores night. They like to rinse their sticky little hands in the lake.”

“Have you ever had a s’more?” Kylo asks, watching as Rey takes another bite. It’s smaller, this time, the cheese cooling and breaking sooner than it had before. Her hand still flies up to catch the string, and he watches as she tucks it between her lips, but it’s not the foot-long monstrosity that happened before.

“No, and I have no interest in it,” Rey says matter-of-factly around her bite of cheese, tomato sauce, and dough. “I like this.”

“Yeah, I figured you might.”

He shouldn’t be surprised at just how much she eats. He shouldn’t be surprised that she devours four slices of pizza, and then eyes his last slice. Though he only took about three bites, he gives her the slice, and watches as she goes right in, biting right over his own bite mark. Hux would be appalled, he thinks, smirking as he watches her savor it. He refused to take food from someone else’s plate, refused to drink from anything regardless of how thirsty he was, refused to try a bite of anything someone else had already taken a bite out of.

The biting didn’t apply to lovers, though.

“You look like you’re thinking.”

She has tomato sauce on the corner of her mouth, and before Kylo can reach to wipe it away, she licks it, her eyes wide and curious. “I was thinking,” he replies, moving his feet in the water. It’s cool, today, the sky above overcast with the coming thunderstorm.

“About what?”

“My bandmates,” he explains, reaching for his soda and uncapping it. Rey startles at the crack of plastic and the resulting fizzing sound, but says nothing. She’s heard it before, he knows. But it’s still unfamiliar to her. “And how I don’t miss them.”

“Is that why you moved here? Because you didn’t like them?” Rey asks. He watches as she leans ever so slightly on the boogie board, her tail flicking behind her.

“It’s part of the reason, yeah. And I wanted to settle down somewhere. We would tour, and that meant planes and busses and being in a confined space for months. I wanted somewhere to call mine. Somewhere big, and open.” And the lake certainly is that, even if he has a new, unexpected neighbor.

Rey hums, looking out towards the water. It looks grey, reflecting the sky. But it’s still better than staring at the back of Hux’s head, Kylo thinks, taking another sip of his soda.

“Were they your friends?”

Kylo stops drinking, the bottle still to his lips as he looks at Rey out of the corner of his eye. She’s looking at him curiously. He finishes swallowing before answering, “Yeah. But after spending every day for years with them… it becomes a little much.”

“Am I your friend?” Rey asks. It’s almost a demand. There’s nothing casual or curious about it. She wants an answer, and she wants an answer now. Kylo stares at her, before he nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re my friend.”

Apparently being her friend means she’s comfortable with showing her teeth, because when she grins, he can see all the rows of them. The human rows, the sharp rows, all of them. But what really gets him is the happy flap of her tail, the way it sends water sprinkling up, droplets landing on his brow and cheeks. “Even though I made your life miserable for a week?” she asks teasingly.

“If I make you food, we’re friends,” Kylo assures her. He won’t tell her how long it took him to make the homemade potato chips.

He leaves when it starts to sprinkle, the dock becoming dotted with water droplets, staining the wood darker. For someone who lives in water, the way Rey reacts to rain is precious. She tilts her face up to the sky, letting it rain down upon her cheeks, her dark eyes closed. Kylo stands, taking the empty pizza box with him.

Before he goes up the stairs, she makes him promise to bring her pizza again.

“Please?” she asks.

“We’ll try pepperoni next time.”

“What’s pepperoni?”

“I’ll explain it after you’ve had it.”

 

-

 

The rain comes down harder as the afternoon goes on. It hammers against the roof, soaking his porches and keeping him from seeing the lake as he makes dinner. It’s the perfect day to make something with a little more prep, and so he gets out all the ingredients for a nice potato leek soup, and some homemade bread. He’s just finished putting a dish towel over the bowl of dough to let it rise when his phone rings. Hands covered in flour and sticky dough, he uses a somewhat-clean knuckle to answer the call.

“Hello?” he calls, walking over to the sink to rinse his hands off.

“Ben, it’s Maz. I need to ask you a favor.”

“What’s going on?” Fuck, he forgot how sticky dough is, and how much it gets under one’s fingernails.

“I’m going out of town to see my sister in Connecticut, she’s in the hospital. While I’m gone, I need you to take care of Rey.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll feed her,” Kylo replies, scrubbing at a stubborn bit of flour caked between his forefinger and middle finger.

“No, Ben, I need you to take care of her.”

Kylo frowns, moving to turn the sink off so that he can hear Maz more clearly. “What do you mean take care of her? Is she hurt? Did-”

Oh, fuck. The boat race.

“I thought the race was supposed to start tomorrow? Did people go out earlier?” It’s raining, the drops disrupting the water. Did she not see the shadow overhead? Did she hurt herself on a rudder, on an engine, on something? “Maz, is Rey hurt?”

“No, no, she’s fine,” the old woman reassures him. “You’ll see what I mean soon, but I need you to take care of her.”

“Okay? Maz, just tell me what’s going on, please.”

“Ben, I’m-” There’s a crackle, before Maz’s voice fades. He’s familiar with the lack of cell towers between here and some of the other towns. Sure, they’ve built more since when he was younger, but there still aren’t quite enough to cover some of the roads from the smaller towns to the big highways. The phone beeps, the tell-tale sound of a call failing, and Kylo hangs up, his hands still slightly sticky.

Well, he has first-aid things, if Rey needs them. He’s not sure how much of it is waterproof, but the pharmacy opens at 9. And he’d planned on watching some of the boating event from his dock, anyway, watch the canoes as they row around the little island. With luck, Rey will avoid the event entirely, and tomorrow when he goes down to the dock, he’ll find her bobbing nearby as she always is. He’ll probably have some soup left over. Has she ever had soup?

He’s turning back to the sink to get the last bits of dough from between his skin and his nail when there’s a knock on the door. “Hang on,” he calls, grabbing a scrub brush and cursing slightly at one stubborn bit of water and flour at the base of his thumb. The knocking becomes more insistent the more he scrubs. “I said hang on!”

Finally, his hands are clean, and he’s drying them when the knocking gets even louder, and harder, and faster. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

He takes one step towards the front door before he realizes that the knocking is behind him, not across the house. Stopping dead in his tracks, his eyes widen as he looks towards the glass door out to the porch. 

The motion sensing lights illuminate the droplets on Rey’s freckled skin, the girl standing on the threshold. She’s soaked, no doubt from both the lake and the rain, and she gives him a sheepish smile and a wave. Her other arm is wrapped around herself, covering her breasts. Her legs are shaking, no doubt from both the chill of the rain and the excruciating pain that Maz described just a few days ago.

_Wait._

_**Legs**._ Long, pale, fucking gorgeous legs. Human legs. _Bare_ human legs. Bare, like the rest of her.

“Oh, shit.”


	8. 8.

Despite being out in the cold rain, Rey’s grin is radiant as he opens the sliding door.

 “Hi,” she says. It’s breathless, almost, and Kylo stares at her, wondering if there’s something in the water here or something in that chicken salad he ate for a before-dinner-snack that’s making him hallucinate. Because this cannot be happening. This truly cannot be happening.

 “Hi,” he breathes in return, before he notices her hair, dripping onto her shoulders, the water droplets on her pale skin and oh, yes, that’s right, she’s soaked. And naked. “W-wait here.” 

 The powder room on the first floor right off the kitchen only has hand towels, so he rushes to the laundry room, damn near slipping on the puddle she’s currently making in his kitchen. The bottom of his socks are wet with rain water, squelching slightly as he grabs a grey towel from the dryer. Wrinkly, yes, but it’s dry at the very least. 

 She’s still grinning as he rushes back to her. He’s not entirely sure what prompts him to wrap it around her, to wrap her up like a mermaid burrito, but he does so, hearing her laugh as he pulls the towel tighter around her. She’s close, so close, closer than she’s ever been since that first afternoon, the one where she shrieked at him.

 “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” he hisses, holding it closed and trying to ignore her bare shoulders, how close they are, her damn grin-- "What are you doing here?!"

 “I thought Maz told you?” she asks, and it’s then that he realizes her teeth are chattering and oh, fuck, he was not prepared for this. 

 “No, she said to take care of you, I thought that meant in case you got hurt!” he insists, going to the electric kettle and turning it on for some tea. 

 “I stay with her during the boat race.”

 There’s something in her voice, something strangled, something that sounds like she’s in--

 Kylo looks to her legs, seeing how they’re shaking. Shit. Shit, shit, shit! 

Pain. Right. She’s in pain. _Excruciating pain._ Right.

“Shit, I’m sorry, here,” he mutters, rushing back over and once again almost slipping on the wet tile. In retrospect, he could have pulled a chair over, and that would have been the logical solution. But in the urgency of the moment - she’s in agonizing pain every time she stands, Maz made that very, very clear - he finds himself scooping her up bridal style instead. Her head rests against his shoulder, her wet hair soaking the black cotton of his t-shirt. His hand is on her bare leg, feeling smooth skin that’s cold from the rain as he carries her over to one of the couches in the living room. He tries not to think about how he likes her in his arms, how much he likes the weight of her against him, because this is not the time. This is really not the time, and this is really not how he thought his night was going to go. 

“Here,” he says, setting her on the couch. She clutches the towel closer around her. Clothes. He needs to get her clothes. He has some sweatpants with a tie waist, those might work. But she’s tiny and he’s broad, will the tie even come close to holding them on? He has t-shirts, he has a few flannels, he has to have something that could work, right?

The tea kettle bubbles almost violently, and he rushes back to turn it off. “I’m-” he starts, before trailing off, because where does he go from here? Clothes first? Food first? Tea first? 

“Some clothes would be great,” Rey says from her position on the couch, and he looks over to see she’s still wrapped up in her little towel burrito, her eyes full of mirth, her lips pressed together. She’s trying not to laugh, he can tell. 

“Don’t laugh at me,” he growls, stepping away from the kettle and going towards the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms. “Maz told me to take care of you, she didn’t say anything else.”

Despite him telling her not to laugh, he can hear her chuckles as he makes his way upstairs. He rummages through his drawers, picking things up before throwing them to the side because no, that has elastic that’s probably too big, no, those are falling apart, no, no, no…

Finally, he grabs a pair of pajama pants, soft and worn from many years of washes, the ties still somehow hanging in there. He also grabs a t-shirt, loose and soft, before making his way back downstairs. He can see the wet spot on the couch, but can’t see Rey. “Rey?”

“Over here!” 

She’s wrapped the towel around her, tucking the end between her breasts to keep it in place. As he walks down the last few stairs, he can see she’s pouring the boiling water into two mugs. “I don’t know where you keep your tea.” Again, there’s the sound of pain in her voice, but her eyes are bright as she turns towards him. 

“Don’t do that,” Kylo growls, moving and grabbing her by the waist. She squeaks as he lifts her onto the counter. Her feet dangle off the edge as he turns, opening the drawer of tea and pulling out two random bags of it. “Don’t walk if you don’t have to. I know about the pain.”

“I’m used to it,” she insists. He can feel her gaze on his back as he dunks the bags into the mugs, before turning to face her. Her skin is pale with chill, but otherwise, she looks almost the same as in the water. Except for the legs. And the towel. 

“So you stay with Maz during the boat races,” Kylo says.

Rey nods, swinging her legs - fucking hell, she has _legs_ \- a little off the edge of the counter. “It’s safer that way,” she explains. “I used to seek shelter on the island, but people like to camp there, now. Besides, Maz feeds me.”

“You said she only gave you cookies and bacon.”

“Yes?"

Of course Maz would feed her cookies and bacon for the four days of the boat race. “I’m going to feed you properly.”

“She figured you would.”

Kylo sighs. Of course Maz planned this. He grabs the clothes from where he’d dropped them in his effort to get her off of her feet, and offers them to her. “Here. Let me know if they don’t fit.”

“They’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t expect her to jump down off of the counter, to drop the towel right then and there in the middle of the kitchen. He turns his head quickly, cheeks flushing bright red as he avoids looking at her.

“You act like you’ve never seen a naked woman before.”

It’s teasing, and he turns back to her to glare at her. She’s smirking, tugging the pants up her slender hips, moving to tie them. Her chest is still exposed, skin still pale. His eyes quickly move to her face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Come on,” she says. “You’ve been with women before. Look at you.” She reaches for the shirt, pulling it over her head. It’s almost criminal for her to look that cute in his clothes, drowning in fabric but looking so sweet and soft. “And Maz told me you were in a band.” 

“Yes,” Kylo mutters, reaching for her waist again and lifting her onto the counter. “I’ve been with women. But the ones I’ve been with don’t have a tail 95% of the time, and didn’t declare a petty war on someone they barely met.”

“It wasn’t a war,” Rey protests. “You would have known if it was.”

“Mhm.” He grabs one of the tea mugs, sliding it over to her. “So you’re staying here.”

“It’s the safest place.”

He can only imagine the state of the lake. He remembers back when he was a kid, back when the boats seemed so much bigger. Back when eating cotton candy didn’t give him a headache and back when he knew the names of all the men entering. He can remember not being allowed to swim, though. There was too much activity, a chance of getting hit by one of the boats, whether it be the engine of a speedboat or getting bonked on the head by a canoe.

It’s definitely safest on land.

“I hope you like potato leek soup, then.”

“I’ve never had it.” 

“Of course you haven’t.”

 

-

 

It’s strange, having her with him. Inside. And looking at him directly instead of looking up at him from beneath the pier. He can see the color of her eyes so much more clearly, a sort of golden amber. He gets to see the way her hair curls when it dries completely, in soft waves to her shoulders. She watches with rapt interest as he peels the potatoes, water boiling on the stove.

“What’s that?” she asks, of the bread dough nearby. It’s almost finished rising, and almost ready for the oven.

“Bread,” he explains. “You’ve had it, it’s what holds the sandwiches together.”

“I’ve never seen it like that, before.”

“That’s the dough. Once I bake it, it will be the bread that you’re used to.”

He gives her a bit, remembering when he was younger and his family frequented a pizza parlor that gave children bits of dough to play with. Rey seems fascinated with the dough, molding it between her fingers before she realizes it’s sticking to her. “Ben,” she says, her voice filled with panic as she tries to scrape it off, but only succeeds in getting more stuck on her. “Ben, it won’t come off!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, calm down,” he says, walking over to her before taking her by the hips and sliding her down the counter to the sink. The flannel of the pants combined with the sleek marble of the counter provides a smooth slide, and then he’s pumping soap into her hands, before he turns the water on and guides her hands underneath it. Apparently she knows how to wash her hands, because within seconds she’s rubbing them together, the soap bubbling with the friction.

“Maz made me before I could eat a cookie,” Rey explains. Ah. It makes sense. “The dough was never this sticky, though." She frowns, scrubbing her fingers together harder.

“Slightly different ingredients,” Kylo says, before returning to put the potatoes in the pot of water. He grabs the leeks from the fridge to wash them, and when he turns around, he realizes he forgot to give Rey a towel, because sections of the grey t-shirt are darker than the rest. Sighing, he turns the water back on, aware of her eyes on him as he starts to wash the leeks.

“Thank you.”

“What for?” he asks, massaging the vegetable to make sure all of the dirt gets out from all the cracks and crevices.

“Letting me stay.”

“Who said anything about letting you stay?”

Though he tries to joke, when he looks up, she’s staring at him in surprise, her eyebrows raised and eyes wide. “I’m kidding, you can stay,” he says, and her shoulders visibly relax. “I’ve seen what a boat engine can do to you. There’s no way you’re going back into that water until the final trophy is handed out.”

“Will I get a bed?”

“No, you’ll sleep on the floor.”

Again, he gets wide eyes and raised eyebrows, before he snorts in laughter and shakes his head. “Of course you’ll get a bed, I'm not that much of an asshole."

“I like sleeping in beds.”

“Why?”

“They’re soft.”

He pulls a cutting board from a drawer, and when he looks up, Rey’s looking down at the flannel pants, her fingers stroking the fabric. He stills, the heavy wooden board in his hand as he watches her and has several realizations at the same time.

She lives in the lake. Off the top of his head, he can’t think of anything in that lake that can be called ‘soft’. Or ‘warm’. Or ‘cozy’. Or anything of the sort. No doubt she’s experienced soft, warm, and cozy while she was with Maz, but to feel flannel or cotton or wool or silk is something rare, something probably reserved for a handful of times a year.

And he gave her old, ratty pajama bottoms and a shirt with its hems almost separating from the main body.

Right. Clothes. Clothes should be a thing.

“Did Maz have clothes for you?”

Rey shakes her head. “She gave me some of hers.”

Okay, then. “I’ll take you into town tomorrow and we’ll get you some clothes.” Or maybe he’ll take her outside of town. There are a few big box stores, probably about a half hour away, depending on traffic. Because the last thing he needs is nosy salespeople asking who Rey is. A beautiful girl with Ben Solo. That’ll cause talk, more than Bobby Jay naming his new boat after his ex-wife. Last Ben remembered he was with a Susan, but according to the cashier at the market, there’s been a Carol.

For a good few moments, all he can hear is the boiling of the potatoes, and the slight crunch of the leeks as he chops them. He doesn’t look up, focused on the task of not cutting his fingers. But then he hears the shifting of fabric, the soft ‘thud’ of a body hitting the floor feet-first, and by the time he looks up, Rey’s already stepped towards him and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind.

Kylo freezes, feeling her body against his, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. The knife in one hand, he uses the other to touch her arms, looking down and seeing them wrapped around his middrift. Her fingernails are still long, still pointed, but for the first time he can see freckles on her hands, on her fingers.

“Thank you.”

It’s quiet, soft and sweet, and Kylo squeezes her arms gently, reaching down to hug her back as best as he can. “You’re welcome, Rey,” he whispers.

The harsh spitting sound of water hitting a burner startles both of them, and Kylo turns in her arms, looking over to see the water for the potatoes overflowing slightly. He pulls from her to turn the temperature down, and by the time he turns around, her hands are braced on the counter, but she hasn’t lifted herself up.

“I need help,” she says, doing a dramatic sort of faux-lift. With the visible strength of the muscles in her arms, he has no doubt that she can actually hoist herself up on the counter. He especially has no doubt when he can see the corners of her mouth quirking up ever so slightly.

“If you want me to lift you, just ask, don’t pretend you can’t do it yourself,” he mutters, reaching for her waist and lifting her up once more.

Her laughter is precious, bright and loud as he hoists her up onto the marble. She’s probably never had someone lift her before, he realizes, as he pulls away to check the potatoes.

Well, he thinks, considering the fact that walking results in excruciating pain, she’s going to have to get used to it. Because there is no way in hell he’s going to let her spend the next four days in pain.

Or in hunger.


End file.
